


Broken Window

by Kalypso



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-05
Updated: 2011-09-05
Packaged: 2017-12-17 15:10:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalypso/pseuds/Kalypso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mara Lee of the Free Contractors' Guild meets a scrawny brat with big ambitions.  Could he become the bonny fighter he aspires to be?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Window

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the Freedom City Birthday Party of 2011, when the themes were windows or old friends.
> 
> I suppose it is even more tangential to B7 canon than most of my work, but Mara Lee has been in my Jarriereverse for so long that I tend to forget she isn't a canonical figure. In my mind, she's played by the late Mary Morris.
> 
> There's not really much connection to recent events in Manchester [the riots and looting of 2011], except that when I thought about the theme "windows" my mind automatically supplied the adjective "broken". The circumstances probably have a closer relationship to the Peterloo Massacre (featuring unarmed workers dressed in their Sunday best against the local yeomanry), as I plotted it while walking into town for the 192nd anniversary commemorations.
> 
> The extent to which Jarriere speaks Scots in my fiction varies from story to story; he tends to do it less in the longer ones (this is long by my standards) because in those I remember that canonically he spoke English with an accent. But he still throws the odd word in.
> 
> I'm sorry if the fighting bit is unconvincing, but I have no personal experience.

The street seemed to have gone quiet, so I went outside to inspect the damage. The soldiers had withdrawn, for now; a couple of people were carrying wounded friends away, and a boy stood in the doorway opposite watching them.

I turned to survey the window. A gun-blast had left a hole about shoulder-height, surrounded by a ring of translucent cracks, and then another ring of finer cracks, a little like a spider's web. I've caused holes like that myself, and they're really rather pretty, but I'm not usually involved in repairing the damage.

It would have been an accident; neither the troops nor the locals were daft enough to attack the free contractors' bar. But someone would have to pay, and I didn't see why it should be the guild. We had nothing to do with their disputes.

"Ma'am?"

I glanced sideways at the boy. He was small and scrawny, with dirty red curls and a comical nose.

"Did you see who did this?"

"No..." He looked a little scared.

"I'm wondering whether to send the bill to the local Federation commander, or the council of workers' representatives. I don't suppose they'll be easy to find, at present."

"I wouldna know. I'm not from round here."

"Evidently not. New Caledon?"

He smiled at the reminder of home. "Aye."

"So what do you want?"

He looked puzzled.

"You crossed the road to speak to me. You must want something, and evidently it wasn't to tell me who broke this window."

"No..." He hesitated. "Are you Mara Lee, ma'am?"

"I am. Who are you?"

He pulled himself up to his not very impressive height. "Grego Jarriere."

I laughed out loud. "Jarriere? Don't tell me you're related to Armand?"

He seemed taken aback by my response, but persisted. "He's my Dad."

I laughed again. There could hardly be a more ridiculous contrast between Armand Jarriere - tall, dark and wickedly charming - and the brat standing before me. It wasn't impossible, of course; Armand had always liked to spread his charms around. He could be very pleasing, as long as you didn't take it too seriously.

"So. He sent you with a message, perhaps?"

"No." Grego looked sheepish. "I've never met him." He smiled suddenly, and so infectiously that I smiled back. Come to think of it, that was a little like Armand.

"You're trying to find him, then?"

"No." He paused. "I wouldna mind seeing him. But I wouldna go out of my way. He never came back to see my Mam."

Well, no, Armand wouldn't. Even if he thought he had left a child inside the woman. And who could really say it was his? Perhaps she preferred to claim a dashing free contractor as her lover rather than the unglamorous yokel more likely to have sired this one.

"So that brings me back to the question. What do you want?"

Grego stared at me, desperately, and then burst out: "I want to be a free contractor!"

Interesting. He professed near-indifference towards to his supposed father, but wanted to follow his profession.

"What do you know about free contractors?"

"You travel the galaxy, fighting for your living. Sometimes you kill famous people, sometimes you protect them. You're always available for hire, but naebody ever owns you, because you're independent and free."

He made it sound so romantic.

"The contract owns you," I corrected him. "You are absolutely bound by the terms of the contract, until it is completed."

"But you complete it. And then there's a new contract."

"If you're good. And if you've survived the last one."

"My Dad's good?"

"Yes. He's good." Played a bit fast and loose with the rules sometimes, but it probably wasn't the moment to mention that. I needed to make this boy understand the responsibilities of free contracting. "Look, Grego, it sounds exciting, but it's often dull, and nearly all of it's hard work. And a lot of your clients wouldn't be very nice people." _Whereas some of your targets could be._ "Assassination can be an interesting challenge, and it pays well. But you'll get very few of those in your career - that sort of job usually goes to the top-level contractors. You're more likely to get work as a bodyguard, and that means having to concentrate every moment to make sure the client's safe. And at the start you'd probably be a courier, or a soldier in other people's wars." _A courier, more likely, unless he grows..._

Grego nodded. "I can work. I know I'd have to start at the bottom."

"And the rules... to call yourself a free contractor, you have to follow a very strict code of conduct. With penalties for any infringement, running from fines to execution."

"Execution?" His eyes opened a little wider at that.

"Yes. We enforce the code ourselves, in our own interest. If anyone gives a client cause to doubt a free contractor's reliability, it threatens us all. It works both ways, of course; we also go after clients who betray a member of the guild."

Now his eyes were lighting up, at the thought of belonging to a community bound by blood. He really was going to be hard to put off. But I knew I should try.

"Go home, Grego Jarriere. Go back to New Caledon, and be a better man than your father. Doesn't your mother need you?"

He had looked a little crestfallen until I mentioned his mother; then he laughed incredulously. "Mam? She's the one who told me I belonged here. She's never needed anyone." He smiled that infectious smile again. "Do you need a son?"

"Never had one," I conceded. "I do seem to have survived."

A man ran past us, his arm hanging awkwardly, and a moment later a lone trooper came into sight. "OK, young Jarriere. Show me how you handle yourself in a fight."

He grinned. "Dead?"

"Better not, we don't want to stir things up. And if there's trouble, I've never met you in my life."

"Got it!" He sprinted after the trooper, who had passed us by now, and sprang on to his back; in his surprise, the man let his gun fall from his hand. Grego dropped to the ground again, and began to dance around him, kicking the gun away as he did so, keeping just out of reach, but constantly moving so that the soldier was spinning to follow him. His unexpected grace reminded me of how Armand always seemed like a dancer when he fought, though the boy said he had never seen him. And then, as the trooper lunged for him, he grabbed his arm and swung the man round, using his momentum to smash him against the window, against the glass cracked from the earlier fighting. The spider's web shattered and his victim slumped to the floor, blood trickling from cuts on his face.

Hearing marching boots, I motioned Grego to pass through the door to the bar before I hailed the passing section leader. "One of your men is hurt - he was caught in a fight with some of the rioters - can you manage him?" Then I re-entered the bar myself.

Grego was gazing wide-eyed at some of the contractors drinking in the shadows, but he turned as he heard the door open. "I'm sorry about the window."

"Never mind. It had to be replaced anyway."

"No... I mean... it was me who broke it the first time."

"Oh." I stared at him coldly.

"There was a soldier attacking a lassie. She put up a good fight, but he'd got her by the throat, so I fired at him." He showed me the pistol under his jacket.

"Pretty, was she?"

"Looked a bit like my Mam."

"There's no room for sentiment in this profession, Grego."

"No." He looked contrite.

"Or for bad shots. What happened to them?"

"It was close enough to his head that he let go his grip, and she ran off... I'll practise."

"What did your Mam tell you about Armand?" I asked.

"She said he was a bonny fighter. And that I was shaping to be the same, so I should come here."

"She was right. He _was_ a bonny fighter. Maybe it's in the blood." I wondered whether I had been too careful with Armand after all. I didn't need a son, but it might have been fun to have brought up a daughter to follow in my footsteps.

"Grego, I'll see what I can find for you. You'll pay for the window out of your first earnings."

The smile lighting up his face would have been a down-payment... if there had been room for sentiment in the free contractor's profession.


End file.
